This image was shot in 2010 for The Co-operative Funeralcare who sponsor the World Bowls Tour. It was taken a few nights before the Final during a Pro-Am bowls night. I was rather pleased with the image because using only available light, so as not to distract the players, I have incorporated a good example of my clients branding and the actual world Bowls Tour Trophy on the back wall yet maintained a balanced composition.
Good knowledge and use of photography techniques allowed me to select a shutter speed that lets the players hand and Bowl to blur helping to convey movement yet maintain sharp focus on his face. I have used an aperture that gives enough Depth of Field that the clients branding is still clearly visible.
While many of today’s modern cameras can produce an equally well exposed images shot under a wide variety of lighting conditions I believe you still need someone behind the camera who knows what the manual settings do, and can override the cameras automation to deliver the best result for my clients needs.
Brian Deane went down in footballing history 25 years ago. On August 15, 1992 he scored the first goal in the FA Premier League. A header for Sheffield United against Manchester United guaranteed his place in history, it was the New FA Premier League’s first goal. Twenty five years on Brian returns to the exact spot where he made footballing history for Sheffield United and the blades home ground of Bramall Lane talks to the worlds media.
Its amazing who you run into on a straight forward PR shoot. The man behind the make-up, making his first foray into the world of Panto, is Doncaster born actor Stephen Nicholas from Sky’s Dream Team and Premier League All Stars also Celebrity Most Haunted, Date the Enemy and films including The Damned United, Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, Futbaal: The Price of Dreams, and Goal! The Dream Begins. Simon who now lives in Sheffield will be appearing in Aladdin this year (2015) Panto at Doncaster Little Theatre.
Mam Tor on the Western end of the Hope Valley in the Peak District is a 517 metres /1696 feet hill. Known as Mother Hill around 3000 years ago a group of Celtic People built a Bronze Age hill fort here and called it home.
Mam Tor is also known as the Shivering Mountain because of its instability. A land slip that probably began in pre-historic times and is still active today has opened up the whole side of Mam Tor, revealing what’s inside. It’s a classic example of a rotational landslip and during heavy or prolonged rainfall water seeps between the layers of rock causing them to become slippery. This allows the different layers shale and sandstone of to slide over one another resulting in further land slips. Experts believe this will only stop when face of the land slip reaches 30 degrees in probably another 1500 years.
Don’t expect to visit here and be able enjoy solitude especially at weekends not even on a cold January Winters day. It is such a popular spot that steps and a paved path have been added to protect Mam Tor from the thousands upon thousands of feet that tramp over it every day.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish all my Family Friends, Clients and followers a Very Merry Christmas. I hope Santa brings you all something nice tomorrow and below is an image from last year of our local Church viewed from our local park.
As we get to the end of one more year I thought I might go through my archive of photographs and do a 2011 in pictures blog. A straight forward enough idea look back and choose some images but then came the questions…
How do I choose them?
From a whole year how many should I choose?
What about if I had 3 really nice photographs for one month but weaker ones shot in another?
Should I include personal photographs?
I decided I would choose one image taken during each month of the year, this would naturally limit the me to 12 photographs and force me to show some images I may not otherwise have selected. This collection of photographs is not a list of the 12 biggest news stories or celebrities or PR jobs I shot during the year. It’s not even necessarily the best 12 photographs I produced in 2011. It is a personal choice of pictures which are my some of my favourite photographs, some produced as commissioned images and others as personal images, one from each month of the year.
January 2011 – Hatfields Jaguar Dealer Principal Andrew Jeffery in the refurbished show room on Sharrow Vale Rd PR image commissioned by PFPR. This was one of my very first photographs of the year I really like the way I was able to both the Jaguar and Hatfields Brands in the same photograph despite them being in separate places,its not something that can always be achieved when building a PR photograph using two brand names.
February 2011 – Chris Huhne Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change visits Casa hotel in Chesterfield to hear about the hotel buildings energy efficient design and renewable energy. PR Image Commissioned by Bonner and Hindley This one is a very straight forward un posed grabshot I think its the light I love on this large windows in the boardroom allowed bags on even natural light in.
March 2011 – A protester grabbed by police after crossing the “Ring of Steel” fence in Barkers Pool, outside Sheffield city Hall where the Liberal Democrats are holding their Party conference Conference. A grabshot on a 17-35mm wide with the full frame Nikon D 700. I caught movement out on the corner of my eye and turned to see the police grabbing this protester after he had climbed over the metal barriers. Photograph shot on spec
April 2011 – Dancing on Ice Photocall Motorpoint Arena Hayley Tamaddon and Denise Welch joke in front of the cameras After posing with their dancing partners in the show Haley and Denise wandered back across to the photographers and began a few outlandish poses as though they were a dance couple. I grabbed a several photographs but especially like this frame, it captures the point at which they posing stopped and dropped into fits of laughter Photograph shot on spec.
May 2011 – My partner Aileen as watches the other runners cross the finish line while looking for her two young granddaughters who were also running. She had just completed the “Race for life” at Calendar Park in Falkirk. Personal Image
June 2011 – A wild Poppy growing on waste ground in Ecclesfield. As a freelance I carry a camera everywhere this was photograph was taken during a Monday morning walk with my camera when business was quiet. Photographed for use as a Stock image.
July 2011 – The Ponderosa “Spam” 1940’s war weekend held in Heckmondwike. Reenactors from the Northern World War Two Association portray German Panzergrenadiers from the Elite Heer (army) GrossDeutschland Division, defending a camouflaged mortar pit from attacking allied troops. Personal Photography Project
August 2011 – Wallace chases a ball in Ecclesfield Park while out walking. I took this on a borrowed 300mm F2.8 Nikon hand-held. I was about to do sport for a newspaper for the first time in a number of years and thought I would get a bit of practice in. Personal Image.
September 2011– Walkers Fresh Hot Crisp Tour comes to Barkers Pool Sheffield as Masterchef winner Lisa Faulkner Shows the three simple things that go into making a bag of crisps PR Image Commissioned by Freud Communications .
October 2011 – Complete with coffin, candles and gravestones a Vampire Fashion Show part of Sheffield’s Fashion Week. Photograph shot on Spec
November 2011 – A small wooden cross and poppy of the type that can be found on almost every War Memorial in the UK. This one was standing in among the remains of an old stone building on top of one the hills overlooking Langsett Reservoir on the Sunday after remembrance Sunday. Alone and out of the expected context it makes a poignant image. Photographed for use as a stock picture.
December 2011 – I spotted this during a nine mile walk around Grenoside woods on a very wet and dismal overcast Sunday afternoon. It was exactly the type of day that you don’t expect to get a usable photographs then I saw this large old fern it looked like something from the set of Jurassic Park. Photographed for use as a stock picture.
So there it is my year in photographs, no beaches in summer, no fireworks in November and no Santas in December
I know its another dog photo but I think its a particularly good one. That’s because an upside of being a professional photographer is every now and again a day comes along where you have access to equipment that is well beyond the reach of any but the most avid and dedicated or well funded amateur photographer. In this case that piece of kit was a Nikon Prime 300mm f2.8 Autofocus. At today’s prices you will see no change from £4000 for one of these. Yes that does say £4k, four thousand Great British Pounds for a brand new f2.8 VR version. That upside of professional photography also has a down side. The laws of photography as a business say if the item doesn’t pay for itself you can’t buy it. You may get to borrow it or hire it but you dont own it. So having a 300mm on loan I thought I would use the day take a photo or two for myself.
The photo below is Wallace at full speed chasing down a ball. Its shot on my D700 body coupled the afore mentioned 300mm.
Ever wondered what you can photograph with a Digital SLR and 50mm standard lens in the Dark?
Ever wondered how much use the built in flash is on a Digital SLR?
Yes?
Take a look at this little fellow. We found him in the middle of the patio at 21:40 on summer night in South Yorkshire. Now he isn’t the type of creature you meet around here on a regular basis so I thought he was worth a photograph if only to document what he is. Caught on a wide open patio suddenly lit by a bright outside light with our dog and my partner staring at him from on high had me worried that the the little blighter would have legged it by the time I got back. No time for messing with flash guns and lens swaps I grabbed my digital SLR camera with 50mm f1.8 Nikon lens already fitted and got back outside at the double. He was still there so I grabbed a quick record shot from above looking directly down then decided to use the “get on the subjects level approach.
Laying down I used Autofocus to focus on the head and edged forward until the lens reached the closest point of focus. The D700 was already set to 640 ISO and Aperture Priority so I popped up the built in flash checked the viewfinder info,1/60 at F4, and fired off a single frame. I expected the little guy scarper but he didn’t. Now worried the the flash and/or stress of the situation may cause him some permanent damage I decided two frames were enough and we left we left him alone in the dark to go about his business.
Camera Nikon D700 with 12.1 mega-pixel full frame CMOS Sensor
Lens Nikon F1.8 “Standard” Lens
Built in Flash
File Format NEF
ISO 640
Shutter 1/60th of a Second
Apperture F4.0
Aperture Priority
Single Autofocus
The resulting image was still a very small reptile in the centre of a rather large frame so I decided a little cropping and post production interpolation was need. The NEF file was opened on the PC and at this stage I made adjustments to highlights/shadows added a little sharpening and interpolated the image from The D700 best quality of 12.1 Mega-Pixel (4256 X 2832 pixels) to a 25.1 Mega-pixel ( 6144 X 4088 pixels).
Once open the image was cropped, without constrained proportions, resulting in an photograph of approximately 3 X 2 inches at 300 ppi. Wanting a larger end result I interpolated that up in size again. Using Bicubic Smoother setting I made the longest edge 10 inches. That left the final tightly cropped image as a 10 x 6.5 inches 300ppi photograph or 3000 X 1959 pixels.
I may have just over done the size increase but the image was never going to be a “National Geographic” pin sharp, full page, quality picture anyway. Considering the situation and equipment, a 50mm standard lens lit by the pop up camera flash in the dark I don t think is too bad.
If anyone can Identify just what this little guy is I would love to know.
